Beginning of January we extended our Christmas break for a short trip to Revelstroke and Kicking Horse with some of our friends. Kicking Horse was a first time for us, so we were quite exited!

The trip started with an exhausting 730 km drive from Vancouver to Kicking Horse. According to Google it takes about 8 hours, which is long, but totally doable in a day. Sadly it turned out to take quite a bit longer for us.. We already saw some bad news about rough road conditions the day before. Road closure between Revelstroken and Golden and lots of icy patches. I bought chains for our car because I was very worryed, but even that didn't prepare me for the actual trip.

Day 0: The drive up

The first part from Vancouver to Kamloops was not too bad overall, even though it was getting snowy on the Coquinhalla highway. I was a sunny day and we were making good time on our drive up north.

Things were still looking good here

About 70 km infront of Revelstroke it started to get dark and the streets were starting to have layers of ice on top of them. Cars and trucks were stuck in traffic and we started to get worried. We started off driving slow without the chains and started being stuck in traffic more and more often. Already we could see a few cars who came off the road and one time our car was sliding heavily. Luckily no other car was nearby and I was able to steer it straight again. Not too long after that we put on the chains for the first time, which turned out to be more tricky than I though. I just wished there was ice all the way, because after a few kilometers we had to take them off again.

Then around Revi it finally got to a full standstill because of an accident in town. Luckily we found a small sideroad we could take to get through the city avoiding the traffic. Once on the other side we though we made it though the worst, but we were in for a surprise. The snow storm really picked up, which gave us almost no visibilty. A tree fell on the road and I had to quickly steer around it. That was incredible dangerous. On top of that there were some sections on the road with ice again.
At one point we also had to put on our chains again, but there was no place to pull over. So we had to park halfway on the street and I was blinking with my smartphone flashlight to oncoming cars (together with the hazard lights of the car of course) so they don't run into us. It was super sketchy and I still have nightmares about that situation. Around midnight we finally arrived at our motel and I felt just exhausted. Our friends had it even worse. They started later than us and were stuck in front of Revi, arriving at 3am. So now lets move on to more fun things...

Day 1 & 2: Kicking Horse

Yay, after a nice breakfast we started driving up to the resort, full of anticipation.

The snow storm the previous night brought the nice benefit of fresh pow for us. I think what is great about this mountain is the incredible amount of vertical and bowls that are easy to access. With the fresh snow we were on and about to explore every corner.

After a long day of being on the mountain we ended up at the Whitetooth Brewing Company, which makes great Belgian inspired beer.

Day 3: Revi

Day three I could start feeling my right knee, so I got a bandage and some pain killer to get through the day from a local pharmacy. Luckily it worked out and we ended up having another wonderful day at the mountain. Especially the North Bowl is always a lot of fun and we managed to explore some new areas.